Diabetes at conferences

Such is my continuous life of glamour, I’ve got back from a conference of intellectual property practitioners at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (or L’Organisation Mondiale de la Propriété Intellectuelle if you prefer its French name) in Geneva. You’ll be pleased to hear that I won’t bore you with the details of the conference or give you the latest developments in the Internet arbitration and dispute world. Frankly I don’t want to lose all our readers in one fell swoop.

What was more interesting was, of course, the issue of diabetes management. The conference itself started at 8.30 in the morning and went on to six in the evening, followed immediately by cocktails in the lobby, followed by a dinner. The lunch break was only an hour and there were no breaks for coffee in either the morning or the afternoon.

Not only was this quite a strain on the bladder, it was also gave rise for thought on how best to manage it along with my wonky pancreas. I opted for a “keep it high” policy and put in little less insulin than normal for breakfast with the idea of letting it ride fairly high for the morning session to avoid any hypos – which I find are always a pain if you’re trying to concentrate on someone’s learned presentation.

This worked pretty well and my figures stayed around the just-into-double-figure level for the morning. However, even with them not being too high I was wildly dehydrated and longing for a glass of something to unloosen my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Despite this, I aimed to keep the figures high for the afternoon session and carried them high right through to the evening cocktails and dinner (I had a salad to start, followed by perch and chips, followed by an espresso, if you’re interested (which I suspect you’re not)).

It was therefore with some relief that after an extremely long day I was able to get back to the hotel and bring everything back down to normal levels; have a good read and a good night’s sleep.

So that’s my way of dealing with a long day without easy access to food or drink – what’s yours?

2 thoughts on “Diabetes at conferences”

You know there are a couple of water coolers in the corner of that room, so if you wanted a drink it shouldn’t have been difficult!

Still – I’m impressed you managed to pay attention for that length of time – I find that room incredibly soporific, and usually end up staring at the glass tiles on the ceiling, trying to adjust the groovy 70s chairs, or looking at the cool copper freize on the back wall (and waving at the interpreters!).